


All Hallow's Eve

by such_heights



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Mourning, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-01
Updated: 2007-11-01
Packaged: 2017-10-18 01:00:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/183250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/such_heights/pseuds/such_heights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry pays his respects 20 years after his parents' deaths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Hallow's Eve

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm thinking about this lot more, recently. Probably should have been posted yesterday, but still just about on time.

It has been twenty years, but the events of Hallowe'en 1981 seem fresh in the minds of many. Harry can see the trail of bobbing candles up ahead of him, and pulls his cloak a little tighter around himself. His is a private pilgrimage. He softly enters Godric's Hollow - not invisible, not yet at any rate, but still unnoticed. He walks through the streets, seeing Muggle faces pressing against the glass of a pub, clearly wondering what the procession they can make out in the distance is for.

The strange visitors they are observing so curiously have begun to stop, kneeling in front of the war memorial, looking at something that doesn't seem to be there. They leave their candles, pause for a moment, then get up again and turn to each other. Harry thinks he sees McGonagall's upright shoulders, and smiles. He passes them - just another person huddled into the night - and goes on to the graveyard.

He walks slowly, for to rush this personal ceremony would be no good at all. First, he stops at Bathilda Bagshot's tombstone - it's not conspicuous, just tucked away in a corner underneath a oak tree. Harry hopes that she would like that. He leans down and gently drops a daffodil onto the mound of earth. It's out of season, but the spells Neville taught him should keep it bright for a while yet.

Next he turns to Ariana, pausing for a moment's thought, both for her suffering and for her brothers. Then he places a rose down into the earth, bowing his head in respect for Kendra and the daughter she loved.

Then he begins to walk over to where his parents lie. It's a walk he's taken many times now, and the steps feel familiar, almost comforting. He reaches his destination and smiles, feeling a odd sort of happiness to be here on this day. He takes off his cloak and covers the cold earth with it, before sitting before the graves of Lily and James Potter.

He has nothing particular to say today, and so his mind wanders backwards - to his mother's beaming face in the Forest, to standing with Hermione that Christmas Eve that more often than not seems a lifetime ago, and eventually all the way back to his first year and the Mirror of Erised. He reaches over, placing lilies at the edge of their graves, and then thinks of nothing at all for a moment.

"Harry."

He looks up, startled. Ginny's smiling slightly, though her head is bowed in respect for where she is. Ron and Hermione stand next to each other, huddled for warmth against the wind that's picking up.

"What on earth have you done?" Neville mutters in amused rebuke as he kneels down next to Harry, reaching out to adjust the flowers, sending them into the soil. "There, that's better," he says, wiping his hands down.

"You know," Luna says thoughtfully, standing at Harry's shoulder and tilting her head to one side, "lilies really are a bit morbid, even for a grave. You should give your parents sunflowers next time."  
Harry opens his mouth to say something, but Ron cuts him off.

"He's going to say something about how we shouldn't be here, isn't he?" he asks sadly, and Hermione nods her head, though there's a smile twitching in her cheeks.

"He must think we're pretty rotten friends, mustn't he," Neville says, looking over at Ginny with a world-weary sigh.

Ginny nods. "Just keeps running off on us all the time."

"If you were trying to escape from us," Luna adds, "this was a pretty silly place to come - we do pay attention to calendars, you know."

"It's not that --" Harry attempts, but Hermione silences him.

"Don't say anything at all. Here, I've got a candle in here somewhere."

They sit down, the five of them, in a ring around the graveside. Hermione finds her candle and lights it.

"You don't need to say anything at all, Harry," she continues. "Let's just spend a little time with James and Lily."

And so they do. The night gets colder, and quieter as the inhabitants of the village steadily go home. But Harry doesn't notice anything at all, for here in this graveyard there seems to be so much human warmth he has little need for anything else.


End file.
